ADDRESS 




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UKFORE THE 



J^ROgOPHlC AND pHILOMfTHIC- ^0Ci£TlE3, 



UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA. 



July 6th, 1875. 



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ADDRESS 



DELllVERED BY 



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BEFORE THE 




ijROgOPHIC AND pHlJ^OMyVTHlC ^0CIET1E3, 



UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA 



July 6th, 1875. 







CORRESPONDENCE. 



University of Alabama, ] 
July 7, 1875. I 
Hon. Jno. T. Morgan. 

Dear Sir : — We the undersigned Committee, in behalf of 
the Erosophic and Philomatic Societies tender you our sin- 
cere thanks for the able and eloquent address delivered by 
you July 6. 

Knowing the high appreciation with which it was received 
by the large and attentive audience, and feeling that such a 
valuable production should not be confined to those who 
heard it, we respectfully request a copy for publication. 
Truly Your Friends, 

S. B. FOSTER, 

GEO. H. CHADWICK, 

JAS. A. KELLY. 



Selma, July 12, 1875. 
Messrs. S. B. Foster, Geo. H. Chadwick, Jas. A. Kelly, 
Committee : 

Gentlemen : — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt 
of your note of 7th inst., and place at your disposal a copy 
of the address which you request for publication. 

I am very grateful to the Philomatic and Erosophic Socie- 
ties for the kind expression of their approbation, and can 
only hope that publication of the address may be of some 
service to the University of Alabama. 

Very Truly Yours, 

JNO. T. MORGAN. 



ADDRESS 



Gentlemen of the Literary Societies : 

My first visit to the University grounds was on yesterday, 
when I had the opportunity to witness the military exercises 
of the Corps of Cadets. 

I discovered in the precision of your movements, and in 
the cheerful obedience to orders a degree of discipline that is 
full of promise for the future. The after-results of life follow 
the training of youth with almost unerring certainty. In 
these exercises you learn self-control, obedience to recognized 
authority and subordination to law. In the results that fol- 
low you will find the power of command and control which 
will enable you to become stronger, more successful, and 
more useful than you would probably become without such 
discipline. The time devoted to military exercises has been 
well employed. You have gained health, strength, and vigor 
of mind and body. 

The honor I enjoy in addressing you is not, I suppose, due 
to any pretensions of mine to literary attainments, so I accept 
the pleasing duty in the sense in which I suppose it was in- 
tended I should, and will speak of practical affairs to men 
who desire to become useful citizens. This occasion brings 
me into the presence of a most important class of our people 
— the coming men of Alabama, — and naturally suggests the 
, direction of our thoughts to the affairs and interests of life in 
which you are about to become participants. I address you 
as Alabamians, and Southrons, because I suppose that your 
interests and inclinations will lead you to make your homes 
in the South. Some are here from Mississippi, but the line 
that divides us, while it separates our political governments, 
is to the last degree imaginary as it applies to our social re- 
lations. 



Alabama is a representative Southern State of the new era, 
now just beginning to dawn. She has planted her standard 
upon high ground, after a long period of sad humiliation. 
She looks around her with the solicitude of a sister's holy 
love and yearning to discern some gleam of the new light of 
hope in the destiny of Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and 
Louisiana. 

In the future of Alabama, progress, elevation, and home- 
rule are virtually secured. The State is not destined to ret- 
rograde. Her course will be onward and upward. The 
people are digging through the debris of the great ruin of 
the past ten years to the constitutional foundations of 1819, 
and they will soon rebuild their temple, to stand, I hope, 
through all time. Their University rests on these founda- 
tions also, and will grow up again, with the State, as a chief 
part of its glory. What the State is to gain in the future 
depends much on its coming men. Its destiny will soon be 
entirely committed to them. 

It is only through its people — the great mass of its people, 
on whom its burthens rest, and in whose hands its just pow- 
ers reside, — that a State can grow and prosper. There is no 
progress unless each successive generation excels its predeces- 
sors in enlightenment ; in culture ; in mental, physical and 
moral development ; in virtue, and in a nearer approach to 
the great and final standard of christian excellence. The 
State — which is the mere political phase of our social rela- 
tions, — must have the use of the powers and influence of her 
coming men in every good work, no matter how laborious or 
common, if we are to hope for this sort of progress. 

You are beginning life with great advantages. With bounte- 
ous generosity those who have toiled through life's journey ahead 
of you, have left you vast treasuries of knowledge. They admit 
you to the richest stores of their garners,- and feed you with 
choicest viands, as rapidly as you can appropriate them. A 
neglect of such a heritage is keenly felt, and no generation 
can ever receive the forgiveness of after generations, that 
fails to improve upon great opportunities. 

The busiest and most anxious thought of your friends to- 
day is, whether you enter upon the duties of life with a just 



6 

idea of their importance, and with a settled purpose to aid in 
making the world better and happier. The future must give 
your answer to the enquiry. The effort must begin with 
yourselves, in self-discipline, and self-culture, but, if honestly 
begun and maintained, you could not prevent a fruitage that 
will make the world better and happier. The dewy night 
will refresh the plant while you sleep, and the sun will treas- 
ure up its richest blessings in the fruit of the matured tree 
while you toil, if you will labor and wait. \ 

A general who would attempt great conquests would estab- 
lish (first of all) his camps of instruction, and cause every in- 
dividual soldier to be drilled, and trained, and disciplined to 
bear the greatest shocks of battle. If the General disdained 
such a severe regimen for himself, the chances would be that 
his greatest opportunities would be lost through his own inef- 
ficiency. Those who would improve the world must make 
themselves better. I shall assume that each of the gentlemen 
whom I address fully realizes his own responsibility, and feels 
in his own bosom the throbbings of the energy, and the con- 
sciousness of power, sufficient to overcome all obstacles to the 
accomplishment of the full measure of the duties of his life ; 
and I invite you, on this assumption, to join me in a brief 
survey of the fields of enterprise open to you in Alabama. 

Those of you who are graduates of the University of Alaba- 
ma, as you enter these wide and beautiful fields, will be greeted 
with hearty welcome by the goodly company of the Alumni. 
Amongst these, some are youths, just ripening into manhood, 
who smile at the labors that challenge their future exertions ; 
others are the great burthen-bearers who toil in the noon-tide 
of life ; and there are still more matured veterans, who stand 
in grim array to defend their harvests against moth, and rust, 
and thieves ; and a few remain, whose venerable locks fall 
about their shoulders like the white garments, which are 
tokens of strife ended, victory won, purity assured, and eter 
nal peace. 

I would be happy to-day to take you by the hand as an 
alumnus of this great University, but that privilege is denied 
me by circumstances which only increase my pleasure, as 
they prove the impartially of my pride as an Alabamian, in 



being permitted to congratulate the State on your having 
reached the field in which she has been so much honored, 
and exalted, through the dutiful exertions of the sons of the 
University. Allow me to remind you that the influence of 
thoughts and actions reaches far beyond the uttermost boun- 
daries to which those who think and act, often conceive it 
possible that they could be extended. When a child, in one 
of the most sequestered parts of what was then a wilderness 
in this State, I heard of the University of Alabama. I hap- 
pened to know some of the students, and when they 
would return from their annual labors here, they could 
have scarcely been more sacred, in my eyes, if they 
had descended from the heavens. In my mind's labors I ran 
earnestly forward to keep up with them. Some of the light 
that they received here was reflected upon me to my great 
advantage. Some of them. are present, and must know how 
I appreciate the honor of addressing you, and them, in these 
halls, now become historic, and sacred to many glorious 
memories. Those of you who enter the company of the 
Alumni will find in the records of their lives much to incite 
you to the best exertions for the honor and interests of socie- 
ty, and the State, and for the glory of the age in which you 
live. These examples will teach you how much is within the 
reach of your exertions. It is within the power of every gen- 
eration of men to make the age in which they live better, 
and more honorably distinguished than any previous age. 
If this be not so, then Calvary and its crucifixion was in vain, 
for that was intended to redeem and improve the world, and 
all that is in it, through the moral, mental, and physical re- 
generation of mankind ; and the influence of this regenera- 
tion, embracing mind and matter, soul and body, must reach 
throughout the earth, the great realm in which man rules in 
supreme temporal power, but in which God is still omnipotent. 
I would be pained to think that a graduate of this 
school should believe that great achievements are be- 
yond the reach of his aspirations. It is not in the power of 
every man to make himself more distinguished than others 
who have preceded him ; but this is not the proper aspira- 
tion ; nor does duty require us to try every rugged path that 



leads to the high peaks of glory or renown. Those men are 
considered as justly and honorably entitled to distinction 
above their companions, who, with the least spirit of self- 
service, are the best prepared, and the most ready to do their 
whole duty to society, according to their abilities. Their 
distinction, when revealed, arises from the fact that their vir- 
tues and abilities are brought into requisition by the necessi- 
ties of the times, by the wants of humanity, and they are 
found ready ; and then they shine with a pure luster, untar- 
nished by any suspicion of vain, or dangerous, or destructive 
ambition. 

We have examples in our history that illustrate how a man 
can become most distinguished, — aye ! immortal in fame, by 
the simplest exhibition of the plainest virtues, and by faith 
in the truth ; and how the labors and achievements of men, 
who are considered common in their range of abilities, be- 
come the very wealth and glory of the proudest nations. 
Stonewall Jackson is amongst the best examples* of this class 
of men. Until opportunity was presented to bring into 
prominent notice his great abilities he remained in the obscu- 
rity of the school room, known to a very few, and by them 
little understood. When he appeared upon the horizon of\ 
fame he rose with bold ascent, not like a fiery comet wander- | 
ing in vagrant flight through the heavens, but, like a planet, 
newly discovered in a position of peculiar eminence, and y 
with a radiance of purest glory which had been it's own for/ 
ever. His aspirations were the simplest desires to do his full 
duty, and his success and renown was the most natural result 
of the honest and unfailing loyalty of his heart to his own 
convictions. He would have been as good, and really as 
great a man, had he lived in quietude at Lexington, and 
shad been lamented in his death only by the boys he 
loved to instruct, his family, and the church of which he was 
a modest but true member. Fame was to him a crown of 
thorns, and a presage of imminent sacrifice. He wore it 
with sublime humility, and accepted its canonization as an 
alternative, rather than fail in a great duty, just as a virtuous 
mother would accept death, rather than witness the loss of 
her frailest child. 



8 

Suppose that this truly great man had passed through 
life without having met the opportunity which made 
him distinguished, who would have envied him his beau, 
tiful but rugged virtues, and who would have thought of 
mentioning his name in connection with any great topic, to 
stimulate the youth of the country to higher aspirations or ex- 
ertions ? And yet, in fact, he was as great without renown, 
as he could become with it. < More lustrous gems yet lie hid 
in the caves, and richer pearls yet rest in the deep seas than 
have flashed their exquisite light on the brow of woman, in 
hopeless rivalry with her beauty ; and other stars will rise, as 
splendidly as any that have set, as the earth turns towards 
their orbits^S 

You, gen.'iemen, are amongst the instrumentalities through 
which the lights that shall illumine the world here- 
after are to be reflected upon generations that are to fol- 
low. It is your duty simply to be ready, prepared, and when 
called to act, do your best in the position to which you be- 
long. If you can not lead or legislate like Moses, be content 
with Aaron, to give tongue to his great thoughts ; but, be 
true to your trusts. Whatever you can do for the improvement 
of the w^orldj morally and physically, your country has the 
right to require at your hands. The true duty and aspiration 
of every honorable man is to do good for the sake of those 
who surround, or are to follow^ him, and to leave the rew^ards 
of his labors to be chiefly determined and bestowed by his 
own conscience. Other rew^ards are sure to cluster around 
these, u..d influence, riches, and fame are apt to join the 
company. (Too many youths have been pointed to ladders 
reaching to lofty niches in the temple of fame, and induced 
to look too much to dizzy height?\ They are deterred from 
adventuring upon an ascent so /ifficult and hopeless. I 
think it better to climb steadily, hopefully, faithfully, from 
the ground up, looking always for a secure footing on the 
step next above you. I feel sure that every young man of 
these classes can afford to possess this sort of ambition, and, 
if it is indulged, this body qf men will soon climb high 
enough to look abroad over a wide and beautiful, landscape. 
A responsibility, grownng out of your coniiection with the 



University of Alabama, which I have no doubt you will 
cheerfully accept, draws upon you the attention of the people, 
and ought to animate and direct you through life. 

This school enjoys much distinction as the alma mater of a 
number of men who have benefited the State, and added 
greatly to her renown. It has had sad reverses, however, 
and it needs the most devout care of its sons. 

For a period of twelve or fifteen years the interruptions of 
civil war, and resulting civil discord, have disturbed its prog- 
ress, and greatly reduced the number of its students. The 
torch of an incendiary, who had no better excuse for his 
crime than that he was in the uniform of a soldier, destroyed 
many invaluable works, and much useful material stored up 
here with great pains-taking, for the instruction of the peo- 
ple. It must yet require some time to enable the State to re- 
store what was thus so wantonly destroyed. At times, during 
this period of calamities, the University seemed to have a very 
precarious existence. Swerved from its old foundations, to 
which it now appears gradually to settle again, it has been the 
prey and sport of political adventurers, and its destiny has 
seemed to oscilliate between contending rulers like a weaver's 
shuttle. That it has survived these calamities and crimes, is 
a matter of joyful congratulation. This triumph over adver- 
sities establishes our confidence that its success is now assured. 

There are many bursting buds of hope, and flowering 
prospects around us, to cheer us in the work of the restora- 
tion of our beloved State, but none of them are dearer to 
thoughtful men, or more consoling to the Alumni of the Uni- 
versity, than to see the clouds lifting themselves above these 
groves, and the night of its gloom and darkness yielding to 
the light that shall cease no more. 

During the dark days, now passed we hope forever, only a 
few were graduates here, but some of them are worthy of dis- 
tinguished honors, which they are beginning to gain. This 
dessolate term is an epoch from which the history of the Uni- 
versity will date a new era. So that, with this class. I may 
say, it is starting afresh to accomplish the purposes of its 
foundation. This, gentlemen, is a marked distinction with 



10 

which you begin life. In after times you will be looked to 
as the alumni of the second era, and will be rigidly compared 
with those of the first. Not to speak of the living, whose 
wisdom is often the guide and support of the State ; who fill 
important public trusts ; and who in private life exert a be- 
nign influence upon all our social and religious institutions ; 
the names of men like Webb, and Boykin, and Shortridge, 
Sydenham Moore, Barr, Meek, Clements, and Bowdon, and 
many others who would do honor to any country, illustrate 
the liistory of Alabama, and of the South, with proud memo- 
rials. Poetry, eloquence, science, statesmanship, judicial 
station, war, peace, humanity, and the church, have all been 
made glorious through the lives of the honored Alumni of the 
first era, and it is left to those of the second era to increase 
their renown, to improve upon their works and to add the 
blessings of art, commerce and agriculture to our State. 

With this new era a change lias come upon society that 
seems to require a new departure in education. The Univer- 
sity is a leading public institution, and its educational system 
should be adapted to meet the necessities of the people. No 
amount of self-sacrificing effort can sustain the school unless 
it turns out men who are fitted to grapple with our practical 
difficulties, social, and material. The highest degree of clas- 
sical culture is not inconsistent with the most thorough in- 
struction in science, and the useful arts, but these last are in- 
dispensable to qualify one for a useful and successful life in 
this day. / We must first learn to build our temples, and then 
we will adorn them with every conceivable beautyT^The ma- 
son first, and then the sculptor and painter. 

If you hope to contribute to the real and permanent suc- 
cess of the University by the fruits and example of your lives, 
you must endeavor to confer upon the country some practical 
benefit through your labors. If the friends of the University 
could see nothing in its future besides a school conferring 
upon half made up men a dismal list of routine honors and 
degrees, without any material advantage to the thinking 
power and working power of the country, they would insist 



m\ 



11 

that itft portals be now closed, and ih;it the final chapter of 
its history should be now written. 

T well understand how those who manage this school have 
provided, with much care and wisdom, to place the Universi- 
ty on the basis I contend for, and am happy to acknowledge that 
excellent results have already been attained, My argument 
on this point is to the students. I am trying to point out to 
them the true road to prosperity, and distinction, as they are 
about to leave the University and go into unexplored fields 
to seek their living and to establish their characters. 

Build your monuments with mathematical precission, beau- 
tify them with classical taste and your children will honor 
you, provided they are monuments of toil and genius, and 
not mere shafts on which boastful epitaphs are written. Hon- 
or, elevation of character, chivalric deportment, a patriotism 
that is too much alive with honest love of country to permit 
it to be wronged by any tyranic usurpation, religion without 
fear or dissembling, and a manly love of honest labor, are 
the proper characteristics of those upon whose conduct in life, 
the University has so much depending. 

University men are educated to become leaders. Or, else, 
for what purpose are they here ? You must lead great bodies 
of people, or you must abdicate an influence that people 
silently accord, in all pursuits, and on all occasions, to the 
best informed. Your training here is of great importance in 
this matter. It is not indeed everything, for sometimes you 
will be outstripped by some genius who pushes forward defy- 
ing the aid of the schools ; but you move steadily, while the 
chances are thai when he has reached his goal he will become 
dizzy with his elevation, and fall. An educated genius is the 
safest genius. A genius who contemns labor and its slow, 
^ steady advance, is more apt to injure the world than he is to 
benefit it. To educate a man into a contempt for labor is to 
educate him out of his reason. If any of you should leave 
this University with the idea that a living earned by one's 
wits, is more honorably earned than by the toil of his hands, 
you will fatally mistake the true sentiment of right-thinking 
men, and if you adopt the idea in practice you will equally 



12 

mistake the philosophy of life. Honor your University, gen- 
tlemen, by extending the fraternal grasp to the iron handed 
toilers of the earth, when you enter the fields to labor with 
them. Your superior education will enable you to lighten 
their labors and to confer upon them many blessings, and 
they, in turn, will teach you the lesson that toil of the body 
multiplies the powers of the mind and the virtues of thfe 
heart, and increases their vigor. 

Let us now make a brief survey of the fields of enterprise 
in Alabama, which you are about to enter, with a preparation 
of mind and spirit that promises good results. In these fields 
you will find full employment for all the varied learning you 
may possess. There is no fact known to science that is not useful 
here ; no power in mathematics that may not be needed to com- 
pass, or weigh, or measure the great subjects of our studies. No 
touch of the pencil can adequately picture the richly varied 
landscape. The lightest fancy of the poet is realized by 
something still more etherial in its beauty. No grace of 
speech can describe the beauties that crowd upon the vision ; 
and the great masters of song may hush their harps and lutes 
while the choristers of the air pour their melody above the 
murmuring brooks and throngh the w^hispering pines. 

Let us gird ourselves like men to enter these inviting fields, 
and let us not shrink from any duty they suggest. We be- 
long to a race of men whose Heaven-decreed duty it is to 
march in the van of civilization, and to leave nothing unfinish- 
ed behind us, but to complete and perfect every work that is 
useful to mankind. 

We owe thanks to God that the landscape spread before 
us is no longer darkened with lowering clouds. The storms 
that so recently swept our sky afose in the early morning of 
our history as a State, and having spent their fury, we find 
ourselves still in the brightening morning, with cheering 
hopes of a cloudless day, and strong faith that our State 
shall move upwards to the zenith of her glory without ob- 
struction. 

We still have some social and political questions that re- 
quire time and patience to solve and settle. Some proposi- 



li 



13 

tions of political and social economy are necessary to be set- 
tled as a predicate of any safe action in the future, and. they 
must naturally engage your immediate attention. 

We are a political people, and must always be such, because we 
are aself-govorning people. We must give attention to our polit- 
ical affairs, be( ause we have no masters to take care of them. 
Every man's voice in the government is heard, and his vote 
has its impress upon the whole policy of the nation. So that 
one who votes ignorantly exercises a dangerous power. We 
find a race of people, so foreign in blood to ours that some 
wise men deny that we have a common origin, occupying our 
country ; numbering, in this State, a population almost equal 
to ours, and admitted to full equality of political privileges 
with ourselves. These people^ without the control and di- 
rection of the white man, would never attempt to apply the 
facts and theories of science to any of the undeveloped 
sources of wealth with which our State abounds. Neither 
could their i)olitical power, while they are in the control of 
the State government, be relied upon to encourage or protect 
the industries and enterprises of the white race. Their social 
isolation naturally forces them to political clannishness, and 
their ideas of legislation have reference alone to the protec- 
tion of certain classes of people, rather than to provide for 
the general welfare. No country can be secure in the en- 
joyment of peace where classes, separated by insuperable nat- 
ural repugnance, are nearly equally divided in political power. 

Without peace, permanent and assured beyond the 
least probability of interruption by internal strife, the State 
and the people cannot venture upon any course of develop- 
ment and improvement which requires more than a year, or 
two, to sow the seed and gather the harvest. And with this 
uncertainty every valuable and permanent establishment is so 
affected that it is impossible to prescribe for them a settled 
policy. It therefore must be necessary, as a cardinal rule of 
political and social economy, in Alabama, that the white 
race must rule in the government of the State. There can 
be no higher public duty than the firm and consistent sup- 
port of this doctrine, because, without it we can neither 



li 

progress, rior retain the ground we now liold. Without it, we 
we must retrograde and perish. I do not design to present 
this argument in aid of any political party, but to prove that 
a great personal duty is resting upon every white man to as- 
sert the rightful supremacy of his race, in this State, and. 
thereby remove the most dangerous obstacle to all improve- 
ment in our most important social and mater-'al interests. 
The danger is not that the negro race will be able by 
the exercise of its own abilities, to usurp the government of 
the State but that its power, cemented by race prejudice into 
an unbroken mass, will be easily controlled by white men 
who will barter away the best interests of the whole State for 
the opportunity to control it. Hence the necessity, now 
more extreme and imperious than ever before, that white 
men should unite in covenants sealed in the sacredness of the 
common blood of our race, to uphold, by all lawful means, 
the creed of the rightful supremacy of the Caucasian in the 
control of our State government. This secured, all is well 
with us, and the negro race will receive the most careful and 
ample protection in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness. This supremacy we have practically achieved, and 
through it, peace and happiness pervades the land. It is our 
first duty to secure these blessings by a firm and unfaltering 
support of the great principle that enabled us to acquire 
them. We have no right to abdicate the authority of the 
Caucasian race over inferior races, established in all the tra- 
ditions and historic records of the past, and marked by im- 
perishable monuments in all the countries of the world. The 
right of the Caucasian to rule is in his blood ; his commission 
is imprinted on his person with the signet of Divine authori- 
ty and command ; and while one lives in the world he will 
be found exercising his inherited dominion and authority. 
Like your race in all ages has done we shall expect to see 
you assume, not boastfully, nor from pride, nor to work in- 
justice, the rightful scepter of authority, and to use it for Ihe 
improvement and elevation of all inferior races, when found 
in your own country. 

The abolishment of slavery in this country greatly reduced 



16 

the authority of the white man as a director of labor, but has 
not correspondingly reduced the amount of the productions 
of the country. The falling off in the productions would 
have been calamitous, but that Caucasian genius supplied 
with inventions of machinery the loss in labor to a great ex- 
tent. Our young men, no longer petted and pampered by 
the soft luxurious hand of wealth have become hardy and 
self-reliant. Restless with abounding energies, they seek em- 
ployment in all peaceful pursuits. They are no longer sur- 
rounded by negro slaves, whose presence is always repressive 
towards the nobler exertions of mind and body, and too 
often relaxing in its influence upon those virtuous principles 
so essential to men who are to exercise the powers of free 
government and are the pioneers of civilization and soldiers 
in the church militant. Still they have slaves, that are the 
creatures of their own genius, and the obedient servants of 
their will. Amongst these, the steam engine combines more 
power than all the slaves that ever toiled in the Valley of the 
Nile. A single line of telegraph transmits more intelligence 
and to more distant points in an hour than every courier in 
the armies of Alexander could have conveyed in a year, and 
a single printing press can accomplish in a week what all the 
scribes that were ever in Jerusalem could not have accom- 
plished in a half century. 

In the law of nature, and under the dispensations of Prov- 
idence, everything goes to decay so soon as it ceases to be 
useful. When the Caucasian race had enslaved the natural 
elements, and had subdued them to every task, however 
burthensome, and to every work no matter how light or del- 
icate, it was entitled to be relieved from the rude clogs and 
burthens of negro slavery, and to move on in its triumphant 
niarch of progress, unaided by the coerced labor of inferior 
races, but, followed by every other race, emancipated 
through its genius, some from the chains of darkness, and 
others from the bonds of slavery. As we have been able to 
discard these burthens by the substitution of discoveries in 
science, which supply us with better help to do the work as- 
signed us, Jet us take up with alacrity the new duties that be- 



10 
long to our altered condition. 

Our first and most important work is the culture of the, 
soil. Alabama will only attain the full measure of its great- 
ness when the entire body of its lands, suited to culture, is 
brought to the highest degree of productiveness. Where hu- 
man food and clothing are produced in the greatest abund- 
ance and excellence, we find the most rapid progress in 
knowledge amongst the masses of the people. 

The shores of the Mediteranean would have been as im- 
poverished in historic renown as the plains of Arabia, if the 
productive power of the soil had been as feeble there. If 
every human being in Alabama, during the next hundred 
years, could, with moderate labor, be provided with an aban- 
dant supply of the best food and raiment, with the leisure for 
study and diversion that generous mother earth gives to those 
who wisely and industriously cultivate the soil, we would find 
that nothing in the history of the world would furnish a par- 
allel to tfie exaltation of our people. Self-culture would be- 
come the agreeable task of every individual ; and then what 
a race of thinkers we would develop. With each successive 
season new methods of agriculture, and new labor-saving ma- 
chinery would lessen the common burthens of toil, and we 
would, in a hundred years, have moie than ten thousand 
days of leisure, in each of which more than a million of peo- 
ple could devote themselves to the works of taste, and art, 
and social improvement, that have always adorned the histo- 
ry of those nations that have excelled in agriculture. 

When we contemplate the prt)ductive capacity of the soil 
of Alabama, and associate the riches of its future harvests 
with the beauties and advantages of its physical geography, 
and the charm of its climate, and the influence these may ex- 
ert in the mental growth, and the moral elevation of her peo- 
ple, we behold with rapturous gaze the dawning revelations 
of her coming glory and pray for length of days that we may 
be here to enjoy its effulgence with our children. 

With such possibilities in the future, not long to be delay- 
ed, who shall dishonor his manhood by disdaining this most 
worthy and useful of all vocations, — the culture of the earth? 
Will you refuse to follow the burnished plow-share? Will you 



17 

take it from the glebe and hammer it into death-dealing 
weapons, and with these in your hands vainly strut through 
the earth as the minion of some tyrant's lust ? Instead of 
reaping the golden harvests of the field,, will you prefer to reap 
the ghastly harvests of death, and dye the earth with the 
crimson blush of the blood of innocence ? 

And yet the choice between these pursuits has too often 
resulted in bloating the pride of Mars, while gentle old Ceres 
has stood by and wept to see her sheaves torn from the arms 
of the hungry and helpless, and wantonly sacrificed at the 
altars of the God of war. 

What have we in Alabama to excite in you an interest in 
the practical pursuits of life, and to promise you as rewards 
for your labors ? 

With many varieties of soil, adapted to the growth of every 
essential article of food, and to almost every delicacy which 
could tempt the most epicurian palate. We have waters as 
bright as the heavens and pure as ether coming from mossy 
springs in the recesses of the hills and mountains ; pouring 
their unfailing floods through the green valleys and winding in 
quiet journeyings through the meadows ; at times clamoring 
for employment as they rush over the shoals and cataracts, 
suggesting their desires to toil for us with the humming spin- 
dles and the noisy mill ; deeper in the snowy cotton fields of 
the lowlands they stretch like baldrics of beauty across the 
plains ; and, holding their vast accumulations within their 
short-curved beds, grown into great rivers, they welcome 
the ships of commerce into the very fields in which our 
wealth is grown. In fields like these what son of Alabama 
will refuse to labor ! Who, but a captive slave, will sit on the 
banks of such rivers and weep ? Beautiful Alabama ! Heaven, 
'in the gentlest mood of love, spread your sweet landscape 
upon the bosom of the earth, like a softly dimpled smile on 
the cheek of beauty, and invites the nations to a home in 
yqur highlands and plains. 

Beloved State ! innocent of all aggression towards your 
sisters, ancj pure in your conceptions of . duty towards them, 
and to yourself, in your youth you were forced by wrongs 



18 

you could not otherwise resist, to accept the gage of battle 
which they threw at your feet ; your first born sons perished 
for your honor, and many of them lie scattered in unknown 
graves from Maryland to the Gulf of Mexico. When ex- 
hausted by a merciless war, and invaded while your sons were 
on distant battle fields, you submitted to the hand of power 
which extended a pledge of peace and protection in exchange 
for your pledge of truce and submission. After this, Satraps 
ruled your people, while their myrmidons plundered them. 
They insulted your sovereignty while you were bound by ties 
of honor which your oppressors quickly converted into chains. 
They demanded that you should drain the cup of humiliation 
to the bitter dregs of self-abasement. With peerless dignity 
you refused, and spurned the insulting offers of liberty, on 
conditions that would impeach your honor. Your sons are 
gathered again within your realm, and, rejoicing in your spot- 
less escutcheon, we promise that our labors, hopes, and aspi- 
rations in the future, shall all concentre in the one pledge. 
'Everything for the honor and glory of Alabama !' 

Go with me, sons of this beautiful land, and let us open 
the coffers of its wealth buried beneath its mountains, or 
gather its harvests distributed over its valleys and plains ! Its 
fruitfulness, in corn, and wine, and oil, and cotton, in lus- 
cious fruits, and milk, and honey dripping from the honey- 
comb, and in the verdure and richness of its pastures, are 
secured, in perpetuity, by its vast beds of fertilizing marls and 
phosphates, its green sands, gypsum and beds of salt ; its 
lime and rich disintegrating slates. Besides, there is scarce- 
ly a rugged hill or mountain in all the State that does not 
lock within its ribs of rock some valuable mineral or quarry ; 
or bear upon its crest the towering pine nodding its imperial 
plumes to the ocean, and signaling to ''the toilers of the sea" 
its readiness to bear the white wings of commerce in gentle 
trafic, or the sable wings of war in desperate struggles for the 
right through impelling breezes or compelling storms. 

In the East we have mines of gold, and silver, and lead, 
and copper ; with beds of asbestos, plumbago, kaoline and 
slates of the highest commercial value. In the West and 



10 

North we have beds of coal, furnishing the best known qualir 
ties in illimitable quantities ; and fire clays, tripoli and the 
sand stones, in every variety of beauty, and suited to every 
use in mechanism and manufactures. In the South we have 
the marls, the phosphates, and salt. In the centre we have 
vast beds of iron, of the best qualities, embracing almost 
every known variety of ores, exhaustless in abundance, and 
literally walled around with beds of coal, quarries of lime- 
stone, deposits of fire clay and ledges of sandstones; water- 
ed with lovely brooks and shadowed by forests that furnish 
an almost inexhaustible supply of fuel. And, then, to crown 
all with a beauty which nature has hid from casual observa- 
tion, like the beauty of a woman's soul, which needs only the 
touch of love's inspiration to reveal it in sublime perfection, 
the marble hills of Talladega are set like a jewel on the dusky 
bosom of the iron beds, and are literally buried in them. 
Here, from the snow white > quarries, we might take enough 
marbles to rebuild the temples of Greece and Rome, and all 
that stood in Egypt or Assyria, and yet enough would be left 
to adorn our cities with monuments and palaces. Just 
South of these quarries are the strong and beautiful granites 
of Coosa and Tallapoosa, piled like the overturned foundations 
of vast cities. 

Now, gentlemen, need you go abroad in search of fields of 
labor, and will anything be wanting except a confessed 
want of efficiency, if you refuse to enter these fields, (yet al- 
most untouched with the hand of skilled and educated en- 
terprise,) and probe them, reveal them, and grow strong and 
great with the yield of their riches. Alabama lays her treas- 
ures at your feet, and bids you grow rich ; she lays her honor 
on your hearts, and bids you cherish it; she points to her 
coming generations, and asks, what you will do for them. 
She has strong claims upon you, as the graduates of the State 
University, claims which cannot be requited by the mere sel- 
fish acquisition of knowledge or wealth. She will, doubtless, 
admire, while you sing with Virgil his sweet bucolics, and 
march with Homer and the Gods around the walls of Troy, 
but her faith in you will be strong and enduring only when 



20 

you engage like earnest men in the development of her mate, 
rial wealth and power. 

A State to be in the highest sense prosperous and inde- 
pendent, ought to 1)e able to find men and women in her own 
population possessed of the requisite knowledge and skill to 
supply every essential want of every grade of society. We 
have not had full time thus to prepare ourselves. In the 
past, the eager pursuit of the wealth that sprang almost spon- 
taneously from a virgin soil, dulled the enterprise of our peo- 
ple in other matters. 

In our changed circumstances, we need some readjustment 
of our lines of employment. In a few years of peace and 
good government we will have accumulated a large capital 
which must find investment. Already large sums have been 
invested in interest bearing bonds. 

This opportunity for earning money without labor, through 
the agency of the tax laws is apt to corrupt the age and to 
leave the honest industries to languish. I protest against it 
as unwise and dangerous in a State so unprovided as ours in 
self supporting works. Capital is a tyrant in its softest 
moods but when it is ensconced in coupon bonds and has the 
tax collector for its steward, gathering where it has not con- 
tributed to production, and reaping where it has not sown ; 
it is a hard task master upon the great body of the people. 
There is no actual gain or growth in hoarded money. When 
the capitalist becomes a lender and the agriculturalist a bor- 
rower, both soon sink to destruction. 

" Upon that generous swelling side. 
Now Sacrificed 
By keen neglect, and all imfurrowed, save 
By gullies red as lash -marks on a slave, 
Dwelt one, I knew of old, who pl:ayed at toil, 
And dreamed himself a tiller of the soil. 
Scorning the slow reward of patient grain 
He sowed his soul with hopes of swifter gain. 
Then sat him down and waited for the rain. 
He sailed in borrowed ships of usury, 
A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, 
Seeking the Fleece, and finding misery. 



'21 

Lulled by smooth ripliiig loans, in idle tr;"!nce 
He lay, content that unthiift circumstance 
Should plow for him the stony fields of chance. 
^'ca, gathering crops whose worth no man nii'dit t'_ll, 
I Ic stake 1 liis life on game of buy and sell 
Ami luined each field into a gamblers hell." 

This will be the lot of many of our i)eople, unless we begin 
to treasure our surplus capital in such enterpizes as will add 
to the true worth of the country. 

Let us kjep our capital at home and employ it in develop- 
ing the resources of the State. Many of your best educated 
young men would be glad to devote themselves to the man- 
agement of your furnaces and foundries, machine shoj:)s, wood 
shops, mills and looms. You may find them by scores, as 
messengers and brakesmen on our railways, struggling with 
earnest purpose to get what is called a position. 1 bow to 
such men with honest obeisance, but I resent the thought that 
the capitalist who rides like a prince in the same coach should 
prefer to hold b^nds as his investment, and the tax-gatherer 
as his stewani, rather than start some productive business in 
which these young gentlemen can be usefully employed and 
justly compensated. 

There is woeful poverty amongst us in all that is necessary 
to make us an independent, and self-sustaining people. 
Were we excluded from daily intercourse with surrounding 
States, and foreign countries, we would find that Japan or 
China, would be better able to provide for the necessities of 
their people than we are. 

Very few indeed, even of the most useful machines and 
farming implements are manufactured in Alabama, and of 
the thousands of indespensable articles of constai:t use not 
so many as one per cent, are made here. An enumeration of 
'our deficiences in this matter would shock the common sense 
of our people. If we could buy these things cheaper else- 
where, this would still be bad economy, for we would lose the 
labor of many unemployed hands, aching for work to do, and 
without it, left to penury, or supported by private charity. 

Those men will be justly entitled to the praises of our 



22 

people who will provide some profitable employment for the 
thousands of educated and refined women in our land, who 
by the misfortunes of war have been left without the means 
of support. 

These widowed and orphaned daughtes of the South ask 
only for any opportunity to work. They ask no alms while 
any opportunity to work is afforded them. With a sublimity 
of courage which has never yet been excelled in the most 
heroic struggles and sufferings of manhood, they sustained, 
without a murmur, the most crushing bereavements to uphold 
the honors and liberties of the people. Their loved ones 
swept into the ditches where the dead were piled in common 
sepulture, or if they survived, so maimed that they have no 
ability to provide a subsistence, they are doomed to a life- 
long struggle with poverty and want. They must adjust to 
their delicate forms the rude coarse garments suited to the 
negro slave, and subsist on meagre allowance of the coarsest 
food. Still they arc silent, and in their silence I fear they 
are being forgotten. Pensions they cannot have, and do not 
ask, although the blood of their husbands and protectors was 
poured out in a new, a second sacrificial flood for the rights 
of the people. A propitiation, without which, it seems that 
our Constitutional liberties must have perished from the earth. 
Let us contrive to aid these to earn a livelihood. The duty 
is doubly sacred, since they are denied, and will always be 
denied, all just and honorable recognition in the laws of the 
land. Most of the lucrative occupations open to women, in 
other States, are closed to them here, except the school -room 
and the needle, and in these their earnings fall below the com- 
pensation of menial service. And yet, there are many light 
and delicate fabrics, for which \ve pay millions annually, w^hich 
our women would be glad to assist in producing. 

No books are printed here, even our school books are 
printed elsewhere. The press is silent, except as a dessimin- 
ator of current news, and to herald the action of political 
parties. Nothing, indeed, is'^one that can be avoided in the 
manufacture of what we need. On every hand, and in every 
valuable form there is great riches of resources, but everwhere 



23 

there is abject poverty of enterprise to bring them into the 
service of mankind. I leave these grand fields of enterprise 
after this momentary survey, with sad reflections on the past 
and present, but I hope the near future will disclose the fact 
that we are now beginning to be prepared to' do our whole 
duty to the country. 

Let it be one of the leading features of the policy of the 
University to encourage its students |to apply themselves to 
practical pursuits, and to provide them with instruction adap- 
ted to fit them for such duties. The University of Alabama 
is a State institution, established in its Constitution. It is to 
be as lasting as the State. Until its Constitutional charter is 
abrogated it must continue to exist. Its existence, therefore, 
is to be measured, in the future, only by the life of the State. 
Every enlightened State has found it necessary to establish 
such institutions as part of its Constitutional organism. Its 
purpose is not only to educate the people, but to unite them 
in sentiment, opinion, language, taste, labor, and enterprise ; 
to make of us one people in all that looks to the glory and 
prosperity of the State. If these great purposes fail, it must 
be our fault. 

England has gained as much real power through her great 
Universities, as she has gained through her army and navy. 
Why may not this University become to Alabama what Ox- 
ford and Cambridge are to Great Britain ? 

Our school is yet in its infancy, but it has made great pro- 
gress, and, comparing this progress with its brief history, and 
recent establishment, we discern many encouraging arguments 
for its speedy attainment to the most honorable rank. It 
was chartered in 1820, and its ;corner stone was laid in the 
foot prints of savages then retiring slowly before the march 
of civilization. It was hot organized until 1831. Its patri- 
mony has been much wasted through bad economy ; its sup- 
port cut off by the poverty of our people ; the torch has 
swept away its edifices ; civil discord has wrangled in its halls; 
and its professors chairs have been at times, confiscated by the 
gree4 of political marauders; but the University stands to-day 
on foundations that seem to be for all time, and with classic 






24 

beauty it is growing to the proportions it was designed to 
attain. In building again on these foundations, let every 
stone be tested and settled in its bed for all time. 

We want no ephemeral structure to spring up as a tribute to 
the short-lived impulses of enthusiasm, or to glorify the labors 
of a single day. We want to build for generations, and cen- 
turies, and to so order the edifice that its plan shall never 
become too narrow for the demands of the future greatness 
of the State and people ; but, that those generations, of other 
Centuries, may also contribute to it their gifts, and labors, 
without marring a line of grace or beauty in the great design. 

The sons of the University now joyfully reassemble at its 
Anniversary Celebrations and feel the glow of their former 
pride in its success. Many of your classmates are missing ; 
they have passed to another life. Some have left behind 
them records which will long challenge the admiration, and 
kindle the love of their successors. 

Amongst the names inscribed upon your roll of honor there 
is one of whom I feel authorized to speak, because of a friend- 
ship for him that will not permit me to be silent. Col. Jas. 
D. Webb, honored every position, and reflected credit upon 
every enterprize in which he was engaged. His character 
was exalted above any concession to, or compromise with 
dishonor, and was strengthened and sustained by a mind, 
powerful, intense, wide in range of thought, truthful, just, 
intrepid, discrete, and quickened to the most accute percep- 
tion of all that was good, andgiire, and beautiful and lovely. 
His affections were holy, and were exhibited with the sensi- 
tive delicacy of a young girl. And yet they were stronger 
than his love of life. Every day of his life he diligently added 
to his stores of knowledge. He had.no limes of relapse to a 
lower condition of thought, conviction or purpose, but he 
moved steadily forward and upward in the line of his duty, 
Next to his wife and children, .whom he loved as purely and 
tenderly as ever man loved, his country was dearest to his 
heart. No toil or sacrifice was too great for his feeble body 
when his country called upon him for service. Wise in 
counsel, and fearless in action, his services as a soldier were 
eminently useful and honorable. 



^5 

He died in battle, and now rests on the field near the spot 
where he fell. The ^tate has often turned to him in the 
midst of her troubles, and his counsels were received as ema- 
nations from a mind stored with wisdom and a heart that was 
incorruptible. I commend the good example of his life to 
you, young gentlemen. And to you, who were his associates 
and friends, I would call to mind the honors achieved by your 
brother as part of the rich heritage which sits like a crown of 
glory upon your beloved University. I have said too much, 
I know, for such an occasion, but not all that I have felt. 
The University of Alabama, is a part of the State, and now 
that Alabama is beginning to reclaim her liberty, and is 
emerging from the long night of her troubles, let this, her 
hand-maiden, come forth in beauty to celebrate the day of 
deliverance. 

Let the sons and daughters of Alabama, with songs and 
dance and waving palms rejoice together that our sovereign 
mother is no longer enslaved, but is marching with firm elas- 
tic step to that high empyrean in which she will be, in honor, 
in prosperity, and in the character of her children, the peer of 
the proudest nation. 

The one hundreth year of American Independence is now 
just dawning. It ought to be year of deep reflection, and of 
National purification. Its prototype was a year of great strug- 
gles, great anxieties and sufferings, great virtues, and was fol- 
lowed by great events. The promise of that year was a pledge 
of future peace, justice, equality, unity and concord to the 
Colonies in their new association, and to their children — the 
States. That pledge was avouched in the Constitution of the 
United States, in the declaration that this government was 
ordained to secure the blessings of liberty ''to ourselves and 
our posterity." In the present year the fulfillment of those 
promises ought to be the accepted and sacred duty of every 
American citizen. When Alabama plants her foot on the thresh 
hold of the second century of our national existence, let her 
be able to claim equal rights and dignity with all the other 
States. With a Constitution ordained by the sovereign will 
of her own people, and her destiny in the hands of those who 



26 

are of blood kinship to the patriots of 1776, who were the 
redeeming power, let her relations with her sister States, be 
those of eternal amity. 

Let the black wing of the tempest be forever furled above 
the States whose names now tremble on our tongues, as the 
victims of unjust oppressions. Let the name of every State 
in the great sisterhood be spoken with equal praise and honor 
so that Louisiana and South Carolina shall be the acknowl- 
edged peers of New York and Ohio. Then will peace spread 
its white wings in the track of the tempest, and love, national, 
personal, and unsectional will pervade all hearts, and this 
will secure to our common country the only hope of our free 
government — a cordial union of sentiment in the support of 
the Federal Constitution. 



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